Russell Ruby always thought his portable radio would come in handy someday to organize a backcountry rescue. He just never imagined he'd be the one who needed rescuing.

But that's what happened last fall, when Ruby broke his leg on a solo backpacking trip in Washington's remote Glacier Peak Wilderness and called for help on his low-powered radio - conversing entirely in Morse code.

"It's really a rare thing. I mean, people don't send an SOS in Morse code anymore," Ruby said last week at his Corvallis home, where he's recuperating from his injury. "But once you learn it really well, you don't forget."

Developed in the 19th century, Morse code substitutes a series of long and short signals - dots and dashes, or dits and dahs - for numbers and letters. It was once widely used to send messages over telegraph lines but has fallen out of favor in the age of cell phones and e-mail, except for a certain segment of the amateur radio community.

Ruby, now 62, learned Morse code at the age of 11 or 12, when he got his ham radio operator's license. He dropped out of the hobby for a number of years but got back into it about three years ago, when he bought his portable radio transceiver.

About the size of a box of kitchen matches, the battery-powered Elecraft KX1 was small and light enough to stash in his pack on Sept. 20, when he set out on a two-week trek into the Suiattle River country on the eastern flank of Glacier Peak.

It was familiar ground for Ruby, who's been coming to this part of the North Cascades for 40 years now. But at the end of his first day on the trail, trouble struck.

Danger in the dark

Ruby had just finished the 11-mile slog to Buck Creek Pass, a 6,000-foot notch in the ridge dividing Chelan and Snohomish counties, where he planned to camp for the night. It was dark already, and the weather was nasty, with thick fog and blowing rain turning to snow.

"It was about 8 p.m. Saturday night," recalled Ruby, a trimly built man with a grizzled beard. "Conditions were pretty slimy. And that's when I fell and broke my leg."

At first he didn't know the injury was so severe - until he looked at his right foot and realized "it's not pointed in the right direction."

That's when the adrenaline kicked in.

"I knew I had about 30 or 40 minutes of time to get things done before I was distracted by pain," he said.

Ruby couldn't use his radio without setting up the antenna, a complicated operation that was best left for daylight. The first order of business was to get out of the weather, and that meant finding level ground to set up his tent.

Unable to put any weight on his badly damaged right leg, he started to crawl. About 100 yards from where he fell, Ruby found a reasonable tent site and erected his shelter, then crawled inside to wait out the storm.

The rain continued early Sunday morning but eventually started to taper off. Ruby was getting ready to venture out with his coil of antenna wire when four hikers came marching through the pass.

"I called them over," Ruby said. "One of them happened to be a doctor."

Unexpected help

Without removing his boot - which Ruby had left on to stabilize the injury - the doctor examined the broken leg. He determined that Ruby had a bad break just above his right ankle, although it wasn't, as Ruby had feared, a compound fracture.

Clearly he needed to be evacuated, but the doctor's cell phone was out of signal range. The group was planning to be out for two more days, and even walking straight back to the trailhead and driving out for help would take the rest of the day.

But Ruby had a solution.

"I talked to them about it. I said, 'If you get my antenna up for me, don't worry, I'll get help,'" Ruby recalled. "I had a lot of confidence in my radio."

Following Ruby's instructions, the doctor and his companions strung up the antenna - two 35-foot lengths of wire connected in the middle to a coaxial cable running to the radio. They tied the ends to two trees, one in the pass and one up the hill, so the line was suspended about 12 feet off the ground in the center.

Promising to keep trying to get through by cell phone, the doctor's party hit the trail, leaving Ruby to fend for himself once more.

Anxious hours

Lying in his tent, Ruby fired up his radio and started running through its several bands, quickly picking up several strong signals out of California. He tried calling them, but no one responded. Same with several other signals he picked up.

"No one seemed to hear," he said.

So Ruby changed tactics, sending out a continuous call for help and hoping someone would hear his voice crying in the wilderness. Using an updated version of the old telegraph operator's key, he tapped out SOS - dit-dit-dit, dah-dah-dah, dit-dit-dit - the universally recognized distress signal that stands for "save our ship."

Periodically he would add more specific information - "injured hiker, broken leg, Glacier Peak Wilderness" - along with his operator's license number or call sign, W7AU.

Still, his only reply was silence.

He went back to twiddling the dial and listening for a signal. A little after 11 a.m. Sunday, he picked up a fairly strong signal - and heard the sender signing off. Ruby instantly went back to pounding his key.

"I sent him a signal, his call sign and my call sign," Ruby said.

"And he called me back."

Answering the call

Ruby had reached Bob Williams, a ham radio operator in Bozeman, Mont. - 600 miles to the east - and Williams got on the phone to Washington. It took a several calls to reach the right agency, but eventually he found himself talking to the Snohomish County Sheriff's Office.

According to Sgt. Andy Cervarich, who served as the incident commander, the call came in about 1:10 that afternoon - followed about four hours later by a call from the doctor, who was finally able to get out on his cell phone.

With the storm still raging, Cervarich said, "it was definitely not helicopter weather," so Snohomish County Search & Rescue decided to bring Ruby out on horseback. By 3 p.m., he was back at the trailhead, where an ambulance was waiting. At the hospital, doctors used 10 screws and a couple of metal plates to repair his ankle.

Now, more than four months later, Ruby's on the mend. He's still a little gimpy, but he may be able to get back into the mountains this fall.

In the meantime, he's joined a couple of local search and rescue groups. He hopes to be able to put his radio expertise to good use - and maybe cancel out a debt to the folks who rode to his aid last September.

"It's a little bit of payback time," Ruby said, "because of what those people have done for me."

Bennett Hall can be reached at 758-9529 or bennett.hall@lee.net.